Jealousy
by goldenmeadow
Summary: One boy. One vampire. One girl. Awkward. Learning. Leaning. Loving. A blossoming. A bartering. A trade-off. 'Are we really allowed this' A new dimension. A love fought for. M. AU. Edward & Bella.
1. Jealousy I

To **Viola Cornuta: **so, I bombard you with the most insane, inane emails while I spin my ficcy fickle lickle wheels, and you stroke my ego and put up with my BS. And _try_ to make me stop using 'that'. Cheers, love!

**Disclaimer: **Don't own it.

~~ This is another of my Twi 25 offerings. I've been thinking on it, and some really wonderful women. I want to give this to **winterstale_. _**_Thank you, honey_~~

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**Jealousy  
**

An outcast, a loner. I was sixteen years old with no friends to speak of. An invisible boy. The privileged son of the do-gooder Masen forbears who had governed the populace since Forks founding with our charitable trusts and our philanthropic works.

I scorned the banality of high school happenings, preferring to bury my head in books of history, philosophy, architecture…basically anything that would lift me out of this suffocating, sucking, claustrophobic existence.

The very idea of parties with the jocks, the hicks, the druggies, the in-crowd, made me sneer. I favored my piano to my peers, my music and my solitude to the peasantry.

Quite simply, I was a freak.

My appearance didn't help. Wan with a bronze head of devilishly untamed hair, tall, lanky, with green eyes piercing and only a bit muted behind glasses, there was no mistaking me.

Though I ignored them, I still heard the silly giggles of juvenile girls mooning over my supposed broody good looks, and alternately questioning my sexuality when I turned a baleful, glowering eye to them.

It went without saying that I'd be matriculating from my father's alma mater, Dartmouth, and I couldn't fucking wait to get out of the dead-end hell hole of Forks.

A scant change, the moving in of a large family, took my insular world and turned it ass over tits. They were weirder than me!

If I fit about as well as a square peg in a round hole, this odd unit of Cullen-Hales was the stuff small town nightmares were made of.

Glomming onto them when they enrolled during my junior year, a misfit human boy seeking camaraderie amongst a coven of vampires who were masquerading astypical teens**, **I approached the four new students.

They didn't shun me.

I probably should have been thankful, in retrospect, that they didn't hunt me either.

There was Alice. The younger sister none of us ever had. Except, of course, she was far fucking older than I, I learned eventually. Sprightly, tiny, strong as houses and giddy near all the time, Alice filled the world with laughter with each traipsing step.

Emmett was…_Emmett_? Possibly everything I had ever hated about every single varsity athlete I'd come across. Supernaturally strong, steadfastly funny and jovial, he just didn't care. All the world was a stage, and he was but a giant jester!

Rosalie was stunning. Absolutely hard and glassy and glorious in her vampire-made body, sharp of tongue, knifelike of teeth, she killed with pure driven hunger. Protective, a keeper, she was a hard-boiled mother hen and Esme's second-in-command.

Esme, _Esme_. So golden of heart. So filled with love she eclipsed the atmosphere with a durable hug, sometimes a bit too hard to my flesh made delicate in their embraces. Esme created this family and made their manse a secure home.

Carlisle was their father. A learned man, graceful and elegant with a small side smile hinting at the tease of humor he mostly contained inside, he governed through mighty and impressive deeds with soft gentle words. _Walking tall._ A tender-hearted sire to his children.

It was Jasper who called to me most. A fallen angel, he was cherubic and cherished and shorn and shunned. Through hours in his presence, I learned of his past, a detestable history spilling with killing and maiming that seemed so conflicting with his placid nature.

And yet, occasionally, he was rough, riled, at odds with what he'd become. Only a few times in my life was I astounded by the violence that volleyed just beneath the still-lake surface of his hard-won passivity. A hunter of animals instead of people. Most troubled of them all, Jasper and I understood each other.

I didn't know immediately what they were, though they never really hid their true nature from me.

It was the natural order of things, a very weirdly easy circumstance that found me walking down the long light-bearing oak alley to their house, sidetracked by a rare birdsong into the forest**. ** I came across Jasper tearing into a young fawn, plundering claret blood like a man feasting at a trestle table in days of old. Catching sight of me, the blond man growled.

I stepped back, my hands raised.

Eyes turning from obsidian and beastly to amber and still not one bit human, Jasper wiped his mouth on his sleeve and grinned like a friend, not a fiend, "Well, Edward, I guess the cat's out of the bag now."

How could the good -- _I scoffed_ -- people of Forks not see these teens never changed? A group of adolescents who should be growing at a rapid rate looked the same day in and day out for months, a year, and then two years, and no one even batted an eyelash?

I was gladdened by the blind ignorance of the catatonic citizens of the village, for it meant the Cullen-Hales could stay put. With me.

Thus it was that my best friend, my first friend, was a young vampire whose self-loathing I rebuffed by joking with him. Lord knew I'd wanted to kill a fair few people in my own day! I just didn't have the paranormal equipment to do so.

I taught Jasper to lighten up, he allowed me to become his brother.

Those were halcyon days. I knew the love of a family of oddballs such as myself, and they expected nothing more than I gave freely.

_~~ll~~_

February of their first year was surreal.

Another new transplant started at Forks High, and this one was entirely human, completely a girl.

Her initial day made child's play of all Jasper's semi-dormant savage instincts!

In the parking lot, halfway through third period, he raged up and down, spitting, hissing, cursing, taking three steps toward Mr. Banner's Biology class and two steps in retreat to his car.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I grabbed his elbows and he thrust me off with little more than a shiver.

His eyes were a hooded boiling red-black volcano, "_Bella Swan._"

"Chill the fuck out, man! She's just a girl!" I stood in front of him, his nostrils steaming like a bull to a matador.

"No, Edward, you don't understand. She's my _cantante_, my singer! FUCK! Her blood is made for me! I will never know the taste of one such as her again!" Jasper crouched low to a pounce and strafed from side to side in quick fury, pounding the tarmac.

I was fast, but his was the speed of demons.

With a growl from the beastly depths of his stomach, I saw Jasper as never before. A primal killing machine bred for the sole purpose of slaughter.

The mutilated carnage of this Bella Swan would be his end.

I bellowed before he reached the double cafeteria doors, "JASPER! STOP! If you kill her, _you will die._ _You_ will kill your entire family! _Fucking STOP!_"

With a hand fisting around the chain enclosing the metal doors, he shuddered.

I didn't care about her, I cared about him.

Jasper was my brother.

Approaching the wild animal, I whispered and stretched one hand out to his heaving shoulder, "Stop, _brother._ You're stronger than this."

Tugging the padlock apart, Jasper stood to his full height and walked almost sedately through the emptied cafeteria.

He was no longer breathing.

At his heels, I moved along.

I wouldn't be able to stop him.

_I didn't need to._

Insanely, inexorably, his fueled need to imbibe her blood turned, on a dime, to the calamitous want for her heart. An organ that continued beating.

The Cullen clan opened their arms to her. There was enough love to go around, but I was miserly. They nurtured _her_ just as they'd coddled me, and I didn't want to share.

Happening, unhappily, upon her and Jasper locked against each other, heatedly writhing, I gasped and stumbled away.

I didn't even try to understand the virulent upheaval that knotted my guts seeing them together, but I let it out on Jasper when he caught up with me, "Jesus Christ! I thought you wanted to kill her!"

He tore his hands through his gilded curls and spat to the ground, "Fuck, Edward! Would you rather me murder an innocent than try to love her?"

I shook my head, I nodded my chin; I was all over the place.

"You don't understand, Edward. This," Jasper waved his arm about indicating something larger than what I could grasp, "Is something I just can't explain." His bleary blackened eyed worried me.

In pacing toward me, I saw the war of his haggard skin under the inflexible velvetiness of craving, "I can either spill her blood, or fill her with my love…there are only the two extremes to this thing, Edward," Jasper clasped my shoulder and we trudged back down the forest footpath to the house, where she was waiting. I realized life as I'd known it was over.

_Isabella Swan._

I hated her as I'd never hated anyone before. With the full twist of viscera, with the desire to hiss and spit and kick her. _They were my people! My family!_ What right did she have to purloin Jasper, my brother, my best friend, my mashed up kin?

The Cullen-Hales, Carlisle and Esme included, thought it quite amusing the two mortals among them couldn't stand to be in the same room together.

Unsure if Isabella's disgust with me was genuine or simply a reaction to the vile manner in which I treated her, I gave her wide berth.

I suspected Jasper of foul play, using his emotional empathetic abilities to manipulate her affections, but who was I to blame him? I'd have done the same thing in his shoes, had I found this interloper Isabelle Swan one bit attractive.

With the perception I was cursed with, I knew the morning after they'd had sex the first time. Isabella positively glowed with the sensual energy of a woman whose sexuality had been tapped.

For the first time I saw her as beautiful.

Though I continued to goad her publicly by mockingly calling her _Isabella_, when I thought of her, with worrying escalating frequency, I referred to her as Bella.

_Beautiful._

It felt like I despised Jasper.

Cursed, plagued, crushed, confused, I couldn't look at her, and I no longer felt quiet simple camaraderie in Jasper's regard.

Her continued presence was pushing Jasper away from me.

Even with disgraceful intent, I couldn't deny her promising charisma.

In light of this, I tried to make it right, to at least befriend Bella Swan.

That was my downfall.

_~~ll~~_

Finally, we graduated.

With scholarships and my diploma in hand, I was anxious and optimistic. A new life awaited me.

Learning the coven was moving on as well, to Dartmouth as had been planned long ago, I was at once horrified, heartened, heady and spiteful.

My feelings were unwieldy.

Fraught with delight to keep them with me, in all our filial companionship, I was equally daunted by the thought of Bella being so near, still.

She attended Wellesley.

I saw her often.

There was no easement from the push-pull.

Jasper was ever at my side or hers.

The affliction, the disquiet grew. I refused to give it name.

My devotion to my best friend and my burgeoning feeling for his mate -- a woman so obviously created, born, bred to be his lover and lifelong, perhaps even _everlasting_ wife – shrouded me in the garb of devils.

Three years in, Jasper and Bella didn't marry. In lieu they held a small promising ceremony to combine their lifelong, eternal vow to each other.

Ever the martyr, I stood to Jasper's side and smiled through a wide-open throbbing as if my heart were turning to coal.

Older, never wiser, I remained niggardly with my emotions.

They danced, flounced and looked flawless together. Dipping Bella low to the floor, Jasper licked her neck and I cinched my fists so as not to pound him to an unbloodied pulp, knowing any aggression on my part would be ineffectual.

Still together.

I remained alone.

_~~ll~~_

Seven more years.

Like a homing pigeon, I always returned.

Jasper never did adequately explain the unsound profound feeling of love eradicating the need to destroy. Yet I understood the emotion in the marrow of my bones and the pump of my heart.

To New York City I moved.

He used to be my beacon. Now Bella was, perpetually.

Jasper didn't have a choice. With Bella it was either kill her or love her.

I had a choice. And I chose to be with her, in any way conceivable.

She was in my blood.

I fell in love with Bella Swan. Soft and bashful, a wily, bold and sexy creature.

Instead of flourishing, she began to founder. The incandescent light that described her dimmed.

Between us, it started with friendship. Nothing more, nothing less. Human things that none of the Cullen-Hales understood. Dinner at a new restaurant, platonic naps in separate rooms, slow strolls in Central Park. I craved her and she yearned for humankind. Biweekly, our afternoons were both a comfort and the most grueling wracking persecution ever known, because I wanted to not only be near her, I needed to _be with her_!

I held her hand one night as I escorted her back to Jasper. Hers trembled lightly inside of mine, a single page with so many words written and none spoken aloud. At the porch, the light filtered over Bella's face, the sad fashion of her very red lips, highlighting a sheen of wetness that glanced over her eyes turning them from light brown to damp earth.

The following day, Jasper found me. He was bewildered, talking a blue streak that I couldn't understand.

Undeterred by my flustered questioning, merely wanting to know that Bella was alright, Jasper held my throat in his hand and shoved me to the wall, "She's not happy, Edward! What did you say to her last night?"

He could kill me with a small tightening of his muscles.

I didn't care one ounce.

My voice was a shattered thing in my narrowing air-tight windpipe, "Jasper, we barely spoke." I wretched and puked when he released me, bent double I begged, "Don't you fucking hurt her, _brother_."

I warned him and myself.

Unquestionably he loved her, vehemently, venomously. He sought to assuage his blight within her luminescence.

But he was strangling her.

Knowing hope, and loathing myself for taking one solitary measure of joy in his angst, I watched Jasper leave and immediately called Bella.

She held back sobs and asked me, "Can I stay with you?"

For a moment, I envisioned it all.

I could give her what she wanted. A normal life, a husband, children. Passion without inertia.

She knocked on my door. _Rap-rap-taptaptap_.

"I've left him, Edward," Bella announced before she fell to me, exhausted.

I didn't crush her against my body as I wanted to. I placed her tenderly on the sofa in front of the fire where she found the sanctuary of slumber. Waiting for her to waken, I paced and queried and begged for answers and understanding.

Night shaded. She never woke. I covered her and slept, disturbed by weaving wasteful dreams, in the armchair pulled to her side.

In the morning, buttery sunshine cascading through the waterfall of her hair, blinkering my eyes, Bella sat spry and replenished.

She spoke the foulest words. I didn't want to listen, "I'm going back to him, Edward."

For a full six months the taking and giving away and coming and leaving continued with Bella furtively coming to my house for safekeeping.

I never denied her. I never turned Bella away.

How well I understood the pull of Jasper. My friend. _My brother._

Gloomily, garroted, I caressed the empty cavern of my chest, always waiting for her to turn up again.

The ache spread like angina, sucking out my breaths.

I loved Bella. I'd take each moment of her grace no matter how pitifully horrendous the rent in my heart grew every time she departed.

We never approached our feelings. We never made love. I sheltered Bella, and she took care of me. We fed off an unspoken implicit, gloriously equal manifestation of love.

I was confused, punched in the gut over my uxorial, irresistible amore for her and my fraternal, longtime regard for Jasper.

But it was too much; _it_ would never be enough, not for me.

I was her best friend, and that was pretty fucking shitty. No matter how desperately I wanted to hear her, see her, feel her negligent touches, I finally understood nothing less than complete heart-filled love would suffice. Even if I lived forever, to be with her as a friend and nothing more just wasn't worth the suffering.

"I'm going, Bella," I mentioned in passing, playing it off, the next time she knocked on my door.

I abhorred her. I fucking adored her!

All the tears she never shed in my presence flooded past her eyelids in big welling drops that smattered her cheeks and crashed into the gasping wildness of her lips.

I turned my back and she was at my side with grappling hands, tearing my shirt, scratching my arms, scathing my waist, begging me mutely and then with the incensed ripping apart of her heart, her world I once would have loved to become, "Why? WHY!"

The plundering smacking angry fire of her tone met the pummeling of her fists raining blows all over me, and I couldn't look at her for fear I'd crumble and never fucking ever leave this place, leave her, leave Jasper, and never ever find a love untainted and true just for myself.

Stupidly, I chanced one look at Bella. Not even strong enough to shove her out of my house let alone my life, I glanced down and watched complete despair ruin her face, crumpling it so she didn't resemble herself any more.

In the back of my mind I made quick work of justifying this thing I shouldn't be doing, explaining it away as a self-fulfilling prophecy, implying I had no control over my actions as I brought Bella against me, for the first time feeling her round lovely curves flush against my body! Her lips parted, and her eyes shut out a world of sadness and sin.

My thigh between her legs, inclining over her, pressing my chest to her breasts, our lips so close, the desire, the years of waiting, wanting, I'd fucking take whatever I could get…just once!

"Don't tell me you don't feel it too, Bella!"

Her hands found their way to the back of my head, into my hair, tugging me the last space down, against my mouth that was crying and desperate for her kiss, she hoarsely wept, "How could I not, Edward?"

Our lips starved together, silencing words that might be said to halt our love-making.

I'd never before kissed so deeply, never touched so completely, had never felt so thoroughly torn in two, yanked inside out, and then put back together, whole but different!

I smoothed the wrinkles from her brow with my fingertips and pushed her dress down her body.

Fully confident, completely stunning, Bella stepped from the clothes and smiled lightly at my awed staring. Ivory and,when I unhooked her bra, the palest pink. As I lowered her panties, the softest swirl of brown just at the top of her lips.

I kissed her there with a steady open mouth, a tapping of my tongue, overcome by the need so simply _to be with Bella._

Her slender hands shook as she unbuttoned my shirt, over my chest, she smiled, wandered, wondered, "You're so warm, Edward!"

With no need to hold her impulses in check, Bella touched me, undressed me, quickly with greedy abandon. Hands and mouth and lips and tongue caressed each muscle, vein, limb, sinew while I tried to remain upright on my shaking legs. The sounds spilling from me were guttural, grateful, and not of this world.

Gluttonous, ravenous we twined nakedly around each other, and Bella rode all up and down me like a slithering thing, because there was no way I would kill her with slightest ill-timed pressure.

Lifting her, cradling her, amazed at the tender folds and hills of skin settled against me, my cock so high it pushed between the rounds of her buttocks, I brought Bella to my bedroom.

Every inch of flesh touched, tasted, licked. I sucked her nipples into my mouth and Bella moaned backwards into the pillows, "Oh god!"

Trailing like silken skeins her acorn-colored hair corkscrewed over my abdomen descending to my cock in advance of her lips. Supple smooth, her fists, her mouth and wetness all over me, my hips raced closer to her tongue, my hair flattened, my shoulders lifted from the mattress to watch her glide above me, eyes lidded, heavy and melted. Her fingertips surely stroked the jagged triangle of flesh inside the top of my right thigh, through the lacing of hair, noticing the shape that was more pale than the rest of me. A birthmark, a blemish, she'd never seen before.

"I can't, Bella, _I can't_!" I managed to bite out so lowly with my hands to her arms, lifting her, then to her bottom, situating her onto me. Slowly.

Locking her fingers at the nape of my neck, Bella towed me up to her, our bodies mashed together, soft wet, hard hot.

Mouths clashed over breaths, and words we might never speak transmuted to tissue like paper, sucking and biting.

I lowered her with me and thrust with force up into Bella's body. She vibrated above me, quavered around me, sighed, "_Aaaah_, _Edward_."

Sitting up, palms level to my chest, braced right on top of my nipples that worked up and ached with her rubbing, Bella bowed back, and I was so deep. Her thighs were slick, the skin between us sodden with sex and impregnated with us.

I touched the umber pencil-eraser-sized mole inside her cleavage, and the other at the topside of her left breast. I clasped the constellation of freckles on her shoulder blades, dots I'd wanted to trace for more than ten years. Pressing until her breasts hovered above my lips, pink like spring camellias, open and splendid, I licked-kissed-suckled.

Glimpses of uniqueness only a lover could be familiar with.

Our eyes bore into each other's. Bella bit her lip, I nipped her a might too hard, and she dropped onto me with my hands to her waist then her ass.

An increase of motion and her tightness inside strengthened around my cock, squeezing. I kneaded her rear and drew a sliver of skin at the base of her neck in between my lips and teeth. Tearing it just a bit when I came, crying out between clamped tight lips.

Bella beat her fists to my torso twice and then scratched me, digging in, with her fingernails in my ribs and her heels at my knees, superb, supine, stretched taut, spurring me on until she arched sharply and screamed.

Immobilized, she collapsed. I gathered Bella, tossed the blankets over us. One, two, three hours. The dew of sweat cooled, dried. Every breath and brush of skin was miraculous.

Dusk turned sunlight to roses.

Bella unwound herself, sat to the edge. I couldn't resist stroking her spine, sipping at the dimples that punctuated her ass, slipping my hands around to scale her breasts.

She stood.

Tall. Bearing straight. Eyes ahead.

I brought her clothes, balanced her, dressed her.

"I don't regret it," I kissed at her ear and then one more time over her mouth.

At the door, I didn't think I should look at her again. I embraced her, smelled her, felt every single piece of her. I quelled the frantic longing to lock her inside of me.

Clenching my jaw and looking above her head, I turned to Bella as I pushed her away, first by her wrists, then by her hips, lastly by her shoulders drooping, extinguished of fight.

"I'm not sorry." Bella was proud, strong.

Marching her back, I opened the door behind her, held her cheek just to feel that satin skin now mottled with flushed sex and the most soul-deep sorrow. I looked at her ear, the skin of her lobe I'd sucked and nibbled on too recently, down to her chest battling for oxygen.

Because we knew this was goodbye and just couldn't let it go without a rise from the other, not like this, not statues capable of fucking, making love, passionately loving each other and then stoically subduing every human instinct to stay and fight and love and dream and sleep and be. Because of that, Bella's eyes, at my final look, were poisonous polluted brown, undiluted with fury and fright and dread, "So, you got what you were after, did you, Edward? A quick fuck, huh? You finally got in my pants, screwed me good and hard so I'll have trouble walking tomorrow and will never be able to erase the sight of your orgasm washing over your face from inside of my head! And this is _it?_" She yelled and lunged once, managing to scrape a long wound down the middle of my bare chest.

Unable to recognize the gravelly mortuary heap of my voice, knowing it was mine, I spoke in a hush, slowly so Bella would never mistake my words even though she would understand the truth, the falseness of my intent, "Yes, _Isabella_. Something like that."

Her orbs turned to graves of dirt.

"Don't_, don't go_."

This was not grace.

"It's not so nice when the other person is leaving, is it Isabella?"

I never wanted this.

In denial, despite my repulsive words, Bella leaned up with one hand to my face and the other lowering my chin, so I had to watch the light leaving her eyes in goodbye, "I don't believe you, Edward."

I shut the door and collapsed against the frail barrier, knowing she was stood paralyzed on my stoop, "I love you."

_~~ll~~_

Bella was right not to believe me.

I couldn't change the path of time.

I couldn't scrub away my heart's only passion.

I was unable to cease reliving the exact moment I'd buried myself so deeply inside Bella I didn't understand in from out, life from death, love from hate.

I could never forget the past.

I'd already forfeited my future.

I ran and ran and ran.

_So alone._

_~~ll~~_

I didn't hear from Jasper or from Bella. That was to be expected. I'd left no forwarding address for my sabbatical from New York University, a station beneath me I'd accepted to be near her. I spoke to my parents, who were still proud citizens of Forks, as often as I could stand the hurt in their voices, their disappointment that I'd left the country, their remorse that at twenty-nine years old, I was still on my own.

The snake ate at me; the gawping hole where my heart was supposed to beat riddled me. I thought I hid it well enough to go about my daily business, but I caught the pitying looks, the sidelong glances, the whispers that ceased when I entered a room.

Returning from a few pints at The Punch and Judy in Covent Garden, I'd made my way from the tube stop through what was formerly known as Hyde Park to my terraced house.

I was just closing my door, locking the deadbolt, when a knock resounded outside. A _rap-rap-tap-tap-tap_ I recognized.

Immediately spinning, pining and feeling faint, I slowly unloosed the chain and pushed down on the latch.

Isabella. _Bella._

A flush stole across her cheeks. A bloom and new roundness made a novel and intriguing and gorgeous rendering of her features.

My heart quailed, then sped as if to take flight on downy wings.

For a small instant, she leaned into the doorjamb, fatigue sliding over her form.

Wanting to hug her close, hold her so hard, push my hands through her long chestnut waves, and sink to my knees at her feet never to let her go, I was cast in place, a gargoyle, as my blood crashed to the outer reaches of my limbs and up through my brain with toppling dizzying speed!

I couldn't smile or frown or express anything other than stupefaction.

I simply could not take her to me again only to have her depart for Jasper one more fucking time.

Fear beat back the faintest bit of hope, and I hardened into rigid plains. My lips were stony, and the words I uttered low and bleak, "Bella, please leave. Don't do this to me again."

She paled and wrapped both hands around her stomach; I followed the action like a man enthralled.

"Oh!" she exclaimed as she clamored a bit more closely to me.

My posture shifted, muscles unleashed, my heart understood what my head would not.

Placing my hand just above hers, atop her belly, I felt it too.

The flutter-kick of a being inside the sweetling swelling of her womb.

A palm over mine skimmed my hand over engorged breasts that beat rapidly like a frightened rabbit's, over the elegant neck I'd only tasted once, to her mouth that was open so gusts of hot air warmed my fingertips and words I never imagined I'd hear made a moist shape on my skin, "Edward, I've loved you for a very long time."

My eyes closed then opened as I read the truth in her slight smile; shy, wishing, wanting, hoping.

A grin made my lips widen, a spark flared finally, _finally, _in my seaglass eyes.

Wonder made me bend low to suckle and nuzzle the corner of her berry mouth so that I heard, and felt, something I knew to be real and us and forever, "_Edward._ I love you!"

I heaved against Bella to be brought up short by the bulge between us and her giggle of absolute joy, **"**Edward! I'm pregnant with your child."

Shaking my head, I stopped thinking. I did find myself on my knees, my face to her belly bursting with a life we'd created. I crawled backwards off the steps and into my house, pulling Bella with me.

Around her gorgeous, life giving, robust body, I slammed the door shut and laughed against our baby inside.

_Inside_, we were shielded.

_Inside_, we were home.

Outside, Jasper remained. I didn't know where, or what Bella had told him though I was certain, knowing him as I did as my brother for all these years, his torment would rival my own.

_His _would last for infinity.

Even while it healed, my heart broke.

This _was_ grace, without perfection.

I raised my eyes and felt the trickle of tears sliding down my face to be followed by Bella's fingers. I smiled through the liquid. I stood again. I breathed. I felt her. I understood haven and blessing.

And belonging.

And Heaven.

Kissing longly, deeply, wetly, I plucked away just once to be certain, "Bella, _please_, don't ever leave me again."

She shook her head so vehemently that even her tum jiggled against me, "You are my home, my love."

* * *

~I just think I need more romance in my life. You?~

Thanks ladies for the love, let me know what you think of this variation on Jealousy! I just read through it after posting (pesky spelling errors!) and am not entirely happy with some of the passages, so, apologies for that. Still.

I do want to say I'll be starting _Fairytale_ next week. And it will be a full-on supernatural, phantasmagorical, sensual and beautiful AU love story, so please do alert me.


	2. Jealousy II

Many, many thanks to my wonderful friend and lovely beta, Viola Cornuta.

Disclaimer:Don't own it.

~~What the hell is this, right? Yeah, I just had to add another chapter~~

_Last time: Bella leaves Jasper and finds Edward in London. She's pregnant. All is well, sort of. End of story… so we thought._

_

* * *

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**Jealousy II**

The night was sharp... even too clear.

It was hard getting off my knees at Bella's feet.

_The way I loved her._

Drunk on her appearance, intoxicated with her flesh that would bear our infant, I hauled myself away to the newel post and drew myself up.

_Goddamn. I wanted to… I wanted to believe._

A refrain chorused in my head though, _"She is his, she'll go back._"

"Edward?" Bella came to me, all too real.

_She'd leave, I wished she hadn't come._

"I'm going nowhere."

_Beautiful, shimmering, wealthy with our love in her womb._

I would take this one night, and then let her return to her rightful mate.

_I could do that._

I could have and hold and then honor, even though I'd taken what was _his_.

_Again._

All the love and acceptance and purity I'd felt had become a tarnished and not so gilded thing.

_Could I trespass Jasper's boundaries once more? Could I take his, could I seal our fate, make her as mine?_

Unwieldy and tired and too much the innocent and too much the catalyst, Bella watched my reaction from just inside my flat.

_Yes, I could. I'd take every fucking thing she gave me, and damn us all_

The decision flashed in my expression, hardening, accepting and softening at the same time.

Crystallizing into one goal: _feel Bella, love Bella, make love to her one more time_.

Doom and decision.

As I lifted my arms to take off my sweater, she came to me and lifted her dress.

Off her shoulders, over her head, away from her body, layers of cloth flew in every direction until her nipples belted into me and we both stopped, gasping and gathering breaths.

"_Feels so good,_" I pushed her shoulders back and tongued around her areoles. Licking a radius, watching the redness saturate her nipples, _feeling her shake on me._

"Yes," Bella sucked in, "more, _now._"

I cupped her ass and she felt my cock and we grinded against each other, _and if I didn't get her to my bed STAT, I was going to fill her up with my cum until she overflowed right here, right now._

I felt like a maniac, pulling her off my hips, making her release me.

And she laughed… with my frantic glance around the place, buttressed as I was on the staircase with her dress shoved up and her tights ripped apart… looking for someplace softer, _better_, deserving of this offering.

_The couch._

Musty and old and hideous and plumped in all the wrong places.

_There._

I tried to be tender and gentle and caress her, but I was _insane_ to be inside of Bella.

Standing her off my lap, my hips bucking to get back to her, my voice a moaning low tinderbox of want, I raised and hastily finished undressing her and... _Jesus… God Fuck._

She was so ripe.

Glossy and shining and stretched and…

_Her smell._

Reaching inside her thighs, I brushed up to Bella's sex and grunted with the wet heat and engorged lips under my fingertips.

I placed her down on the sofa and stood over her, ridding myself of jeans.

With every final article I lost, Bella gyrated, her fingers reaching to me and then slipping back to her nipples, sliding between her legs, opening herself to me.

On my knees between her thighs I couldn't keep myself from her pussy. I dived in and inscribed with my tongued, my voice, my mouth, "_Oh Fuck, I love you, Bella._"

Her hips rolled up, and her hands gripped me to her and giggles launched up her fruitful belly, "I love you to… _ahhh… baby!"_

_Mmmm, _she was soaking and wide open and delicious, and I licked her labia, shoved my whole face against her, worrying her with my beard's growth, melting my mouth and tongue like a knife, a dagger, straight inside of her cunt as I pushed her legs aside and found my knees and sucked and fucked her so hard she came with a curl to her back… _I didn't stop until she moaned for my cock inside of her._

"No_, you fuck me_," I lifted her above me, situating myself back on the couch, lingering my lips and hands over her new lush curves.

When she bent low, craning her back up to keep the weight of her womb lifted, when she touched her lips in a tight oval of berriness to my cock, I shouted, "_Oh GOD, Bella!_"

_Oh fuck… ooooh, Fuck!_

I slammed up into her without asking.

I gathered her hair and clasped her neck and felt my length tug in and out of her as she took me deep enough to swallow and lick and suck… thick strands of saliva stringing us together every time her pursed persimmon lips released me with a hungry smile.

I couldn't watch.

It was too erotic, too much like my dreams, too real and unreal.

Nuzzling down to my pubic bone and blowing across my curled and dampened thick hair, Bella groaned over me.

_Oh Jesus Fucking Christ._

I was going to cum so…

_Ahhhh._

Slipping me out, Bella curled her tongue right under the overhanging rim of my tip, tapping, slicing into my small, wet slit, licking and licking and looking so… _Oh, shit, I shouldn't have opened my eyes._

"_Fuck!" _ I shouted, and hauled her off of me before I exploded in her mouth.

She righted herself, steadying against my chest, squaring her shoulders, toppling just a little bit with her new weight**.**

We both watched as she hovered over me, teasingly lowering her pussy to my cock.

Rolling her hips and shaking her hair out and holstering her magnificent tits and her round belly in her arms, my dick stood straight up, straining to part her, _be inside of her._

_We both watched_ as Bella nudged against me, her thighs shaking, my toes curling, my abdomen cracking open and all my muscles on alert.

Dragging my eyes to her, I saw her smirk and purse her lips in a kiss she blew to me, the underside of her womb wobbling against my stomach. "Want me to take you?"

"Oh, _fuck yes!"_

I readied myself by grasping the frayed upholstery behind me, but nothing, _nothing_ could prepare me for the tight wet oven that slowly slid right over my shaft, heatedly clenching and pulling out drops of cum even when I wasn't halfway inside of her.

Thrusting up, our pelvises collided, "Oh my fucking-"

"_GODDAMN!"_

So… _so swollen. So surrounded by her abundant curves._

I slapped my hands to her broadening ass, jiggled her up and watched her tits sway until I sneered and tucked my face between them, turning from side to side to nip each crest to higher, redder peaks.

Bella's fingernails ripped into my thighs when she bowed up and away from me, but I followed.

I hollowed my cheeks and sucked harder at her sweet breasts.

I grabbed her hips and slammed her down onto me as I reared up with a hoarse yell, and I already felt the thick drops coming out from my cock, pulsing up from my sac, sluicing inside of her and simmering down onto where we joined.

Wet, and heated.

Musky odor of sex.

Sneers and snarls and…

_Wide open smiles, by hardened lips._

We bit each at each other's mouths and slid down to necks.

Drawing blood.

I had to, I had to hook my index finger right into the nook of her, right above where we were rife and riding and fucking and nasty, _I had to make her cum so fucking hard she couldn't imagine ano- _

As soon as the pad of my finger met her engorged clit, her entire body rumbled and raised off me.

I followed and pulled Bella down, bending my knees behind her, seating her on me, seething hard and fucking her deliriously through the crazy orgasm that had her scrabbling away from me.

"_More._" I tore against her, into her, up her, against her _again_.

I turned Bella over and… _when I came I fucking anointed her with such a release my cum leaked down outside of us, the scent swilling all over our legs, our bodies, my hands that needed to bring a taste to my lips, my hips that continued to work…_

_Her eyes._

They were unveiled.

Wide open.

_Wondering._

Carrying Bella up to my room, I cradled her and murmured.

I swept her hair away from her face and smiled that she was already half asleep, succumbing to her slumber.

On my bed, I didn't wipe away the vestiges of my cum from us.

Our pubic hair was matted.

Hungrily rolling into me, Bella sighed, "_Hmmm."_

Sticky with sex, musky with mating, we joined together sleepily again.

And we fell asleep with my cock still inside her, my chest to her back, her thighs rubbing against the hair on mine, my hand patting tender circles on the side of her belly where I felt a little poke.

_~~ll~~_

_Ah, shit._

Another fucking dream.

_A nightmare, really._

Oh, oh Christ.

A heavy weight shoved against me, a wieldy breast was in my palm, there were thick juices and a fresh erection pushing me into the sweltering sex coupling to my cock.

_Oh… Christ._

Oh… _no._

I couldn't do this again.

And it wasn't a nightmare, not last night, not Bella, and Bella was… in my arms, snuffling lightly and shuffling her hips into my aroused, ready shaft.

_I couldn't._

I was barely awake, but the ghost of Jasper hung from the ceiling like a suicidal suffocation.

I didn't take a breath of her, I wouldn't take a kiss, I wouldn't make love to her again, I would forget about last night… _I'd obliterate it all, even that jumping bump in her belly._

"Have you been with him?"

My rough query cut into her sleep, and her slurry eyes quickened to disdain as she unwrapped herself from me, "Good morning to you, too, Edward.

"_Asshole._" She finished.

My feet met the cold floorboards, and I hung my head, a dead rasp coming out, "I can get you someplace…"

"No. I didn't come here expecting a welcome, Edward." Bella edged off the bed, "I came here because I wanted you to know… _I am expecting our child._"

I couldn't look at her.

I couldn't know the way her creamy skin would glow in this morning's dawn-light.

I couldn't see the way her body had blossomed and changed to make room for our young.

"You going back to him?" I kept my back turned.

"You think so _fucking_ little of me, don't you?" Her voice like a slap across my face.

I grabbed my head and my elbows dug into my knees as I hunkered away from Bella.

"That I'd come to you, _beg for your forgiveness, _and then go back to Jasper when you turned me away?

"You've _always_been too good for me. Proud, noble," _Funny, the way she slandered those words were nothing like compliments._ "Above it all.

"I _loved_ Jasper completely."

My heart slowed in my chest, arresting again.

She rounded the bed to face me, incredibly undressed, the melon of her belly a warm, pink globe, "I said, 'I _loved_ him'.

"Can't you see me? Can't you hear me?" Bella jostled against me until I stood, and I couldn't fucking _not_ see her, _feel_ her.

Hungry and pained, I met her breasts and licked those dark dots, those sweet constellations of her triad of moles up to her collar bone.

Heavy and heaving, her tits were preparing for motherhood; milky white with excited, tight nipples.

Even while I sucked her tit into my mouth, opening as wide as I could to take the entirely luscious mound inside, I murmured, "I want you to leave, _you have to leave."_

She grabbed me off of her then.

Bella hugged her womb and walked back to the wall.

"You look like you're seeing a ghost," I intoned from where she left me.

Minutes had passed, maybe they were hours. I had no way of understanding the passage of time anymore. Even the din of Big Ben fell on my deafened ears, my deadened heart.

The last time I'd seen her, she'd scratched and smacked and hated me. She'd fucked and found and loved me.

Bella had fallen outside my doorstep because I'd turned her away and she'd accepted that.

We'd made love.

_Finally_.

Beginning, ending.

Jasper was supposed to be her one.

But my heart's disrepair, _my hearts lumbering towards her,_ was irrefutable.

I had slid down the other side of the portal, as if it was a magic mirrored transparency and our shaking hands could trespass what our fidelity to my brother and her lover could not, could never…_would never._

Six months, and every morning's light had seized me. In London, Hyde Park, a privileged man. A persecuted man.

Now, in my room, furious and just this side of hysterics, Bella banged the wall with her fist and screamed, "You KICKED ME OUT!"

"_You left me, you disappeared, you fucking deserted me._"

"So, yes… this _thing_ between us is a fucking ghost."

_Yes_, I had. I had left.

I was the coward.

We'd both known, she was sworn to _him_ as the current made true to the waning of the moon.

And maybe he'd kill us both if he couldn't have her.

_He was that capable._

But death didn't worry me.

These six months that I had marked off I hadn't looked at clocks or calendars. I had no watch and I was timeless. I'd grimly smiled, _just like Jasper._

I'd imagined if I got to a year, I'd be okay.

So even though I hadn't actually been ticking off the seconds, I really had been keeping track of hours and minutes and months.

As the anniversary had loomed closer, I'd known; this shit would goddamn kill me more.

Stamped against my bedroom wall, with what had been beautiful erased from her face, with her shoulders held upright and her face lined with leaving, her finger, _her ring finger_ rounded down over her stomach.

It was empty of the emblem of hers and Jasper's love, but the mark was still there, _his mark was still on her even if mine was within her._

There it was, then.

In this gloomy light from my flat, _it_ glowed, that circlet where her promising ring to Jasper had blended them together. Even in its absence, it was a tattoo.

And then, she was that apparition I'd dreamed of, the woman who'd let me undress her slowly, suck her tits, touch all of her freckles and birthmarks and slide up inside her before reality had settled over us like a burial shroud.

Something in my expression must have gotten to her when I started walking away, raking through our clothes on the floor with my feet, troubling out my own low,sad words, "I think I've seen a ghost, too." As if knowing I didn't believe she was real or here or with me ever, Bella's caress to my back was foretold by the jut of her tummy and another kick from within, and I jerked as if burned, because she'd always branded me.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw the heather of her cheeks that had been blooming just minutes ago paled with my harsh scrutiny.

I waved a hand back. I wanted to slap her, but if she was real, if she was here, if she was pregnant, I could never do that, "You don't exist."

She gasped, recoiled, grabbed the frame of the bed and steadied her feet.

Yes, _blanched_, she was a ghost, just as I thought.

I smirked to myself about the slippery notions of my unscrewed mind.

"_Answer me now_, specter, have you fucked him too?"

"I won't answer that," she retorted. Even naked, she looked refined, furious, _spite filled._

I cavorted across the room, barring the doorway, "Oh really, why not? You certainly fucked him well enough before… I have all his recounts on that fact."

She came within an inch of my face, and I was itching to pull her into me once more, take her and touch the mound of her belly, the new glorious hills of her tits, kiss her ready mouth until we both bled in understanding there was no bloodlust here, _just_, lust, but I saw his hands all over her.

She was marked, and not by me.

_Unholy._

Narrow of eyes, she beat out, "The only _man_ who's ever _fucked_ me like _this_," she waved back over the messed up bed that bore the imprints of our twining bodies, "was you. And I gave myself to you, Edward." She was too close, too intense, too beautiful, too lively… _and mad_. "What," she taunted, "you can't even say my name anymore? Have I haunted you as much as you did me?

"I'm here and this is real; I'm no ghost."

A litter of tears appeared, dew drops to her brown irises and I raised my eyes so I wouldn't see her shell cracking; the sneer painted on my face never wanted to be wiped off because this was the first time I'd felt anything in so fucking long… I'd take jealousy and venom and this vitriol over nothingness.

"_Bella_, did you fuck Jasper?"

_And I love you, I hate you, why are you here and how can we have a child when we've never had a life together._

"Answer me," I wouldn't be waylaid.

"_Yes_," sad defeat made her droop. "Yes, I did… all along, every year I wanted to be with you, every month I couldn't get you out of my head, every day we were together as friends who wanted more… _friends who knew there could be so much more_… yes, Edward, _yes_. I slept with Jasper. I let him fuck me. He had me. I sucked him and rode him and we did it _everywhere_. He ate me and kissed me and loved me.

"You know he loved me, right?'

I punched both fists into the wall.

"You know he loves you, too?"

I was catatonic, my impulse to hurt trained inside of me, because… _there was no way in hell I could… I couldn't… I would never…._

"And every time, _every fucking time_, I cried afterwards, because my heart had stopped beating for him. I rolled away, I faced the wall, I reached back to touch his face and comb my fingers through his hair because I _wanted_ to love him, Edward." She breached the seconds ticking between us, her arms that had been like crosses before opened so she could draw her fingers over my throat and my shoulders and down my arms. _Oh god, so good, I missed her so much._

But I felt sick.

"When was the last time?" I scraped out.

She inhaled as if smacked.

"Every time, Edward, I was with you… I can't forget you… I can't ignore that _you are my singer_. I can't forget the way we made love… just once, and we made this baby," her hands retracted to circle her tummy. "_He knew._"

I inhaled as if I'd been punched in my stomach.

"What, spare a little thought for me at bedtime, did you?" I fought on, _I needed to know._

Through my gritted teeth, I didn't look at her because if I did I would fucking topple, and she wasn't real and she wasn't here and if she was, and if she was pregnant with our baby…she'd still leave because he would come… and she would go and I couldn't… _no way in HELL could I do this again, _not with, not with, not with our… _baby_. "When Was The Last Time You Fucked Jasper?"

Her wound was final then.

Coolness beat off her body as if she imbued _him_.

"Six months and three days ago, Edward. Two nights before the first time we made love, in fact."

Relief made me sag, and I opened my hands, lifted my eyes, but the room was empty.

_Goddamn._

_Nightmare._

Oh… no.

A fast race down the stairs.

_Bella._

"_Bella!"_ I stumbled down after her, catching up to her just as the door plucked open and a draught found me and I stood frozen, watching hate solidifying over her face, wondering when she'd gotten dressed, wishing I could… _Fucking hell… oh God… Oh, I could never take all that back._

Her final words were a hard, pointed, perfectly aimed dagger that knocked me back into the vestibule as she turned away, "Thanks for the fuck, Edward. At least you were good for that, _again_. And being pregnant does makes me horny."

_~~ll~~_

It was inevitable.

We were incurable.

It was fucking ironic, and the cruelest fate we'd fallen in love with the same woman.

_I should have stuck to hating her._

So, I wasn't surprised at the icy fist that met my face, splitting my lip and waking me the fuck up from where I'd slumped after Bella had fled.

Not at all.

We were two parts of a whole… _three parts even… _going to be four.

My stomach curdled in nausea, not from his punch but from the thought… _I'd told Bella to leave when she was pregnant with our child._

Inevitable as life, inglorious as death.

_Fealty._

Furious.

Of course, I was the life, he was the death.

I felt no fear, just implacable fury…mostly at myself, but I'd use it against him.

And as I watched the crimson drops fall from me, _I was all over this fight._

On my feet and ducking low, I hit him head on in the stomach, nearly knocking myself out.

Jasper's jagged teeth cut through the air as he held his hands up, "One more free throw, Edward, and then I'm going to fuck you up hard."

Caging back and forth, understanding he could crank me in two in an instant, I didn't give a shit!

Prowling toward Jasper, a gleaming new horror in his eyes, I folded under his raised arm and jumped on his back, jamming my fists to where his kidneys would be, then reaching over his chest to pound against his windpipe.

Taking us down in a mash of limbs twisting and tightening wrestling, working each other over until I spat the reddest blood onto his face and he lapped it up, "Always wondered what you tasted like.

"_Not as good as her."_

Insane to hurt him, I pounded away, ignoring my cracking knuckles, my aching fists, the pronounced agony in my chest that came not from his retribution, but what I'd done to Bella.

Toppled, overpowered easily, only my body was subdued as Jasper sat on top of me.

He smirked a venomous thing, "You don't love her. _You are incapable of loving her like I do._"

I growled and kicked, I spit and hissed because that just was not fucking true.

"_You_ will only love her as long as you live; and I guarantee, Brother, that won't be for much longer," the avenging soldier took my throat in his hand, calming my clamor with his mind, trying to shut me up and shut me out and all the while his eyes dared me to deny his declaration.

"_Bella,"_ I panted, my nose broken, my face swollen, my breath stolen by him.

"What?" he looked like he'd just come in fresh from a walk in the park.

"She has a name. It's _Isabella_." I craned out of his hold as his body slackened above mine.

His look hopscotched from awareness to orneriness, but he was losing it.

"Bella," I repeated, like it was the solution to all the malignance between us, instead of the problem that had us hating one another, when before we'd loved as siblings.

"Bella_… she's not an 'it', she's not 'her', she is NOT a possession."_

Rocking back and morphing from vampire to man, Jasper raised a finger in accusation, "You threw her out!"

I couldn't deny that, guilt was dashed all over me.

"You fucking _fool_!" Jasper crowed, "What I wouldn't give to have her look at me the goddamn way she's been mooning over _photographs _of you! And you… you've thrown her away?

"I should kill you right now, _I really want to end your life, Edward._" He stood up.

I wanted that, too.

My hands to my sides, "Do it, there's nothing-"

"Nothing?" His rage was inanimate, animalistic, _awesome._

"_NOTHING?" _He towered, insurmountable.

"Bella is pregnant by _you._ Bella _loves YOU!"_ He laid his palm to my chest where the _thump-pump_ of my blood still worked.

"You're a _disgrace_."

He shook his head, backing off.

"I didn't come here to steal her back. She's not ever coming back to me, you asshole. _I came to pound some goddamn sense into you_, to look after Bella because you sure as hell haven't." His eyes were strained, his face mangled with emotion.

He was… _he'd let her go._

"_I would give_… I would give all my endless days to know the love Bella feels for you," Jasper hung onto the back of a chair, chugging in the same amount of breaths as me. His chest heaving. A sad and overtaken man.

"I'm sorry, my brother," I whispered. "I never wanted -"

"I know you didn't," he was harsh, staving off emotion.

"I love her completely."

"You better do something about that then."

I walked quietly to him and touched his slouched shoulders.

We hugged quickly, pride pulling us apart.

_When had we become men who wanted the same thing?_

"I'll always be alone, Edward.

"I'm used to it though," his mighty hands shielded his eyes.

"I had a wife.

"I had a friend.

"_I have a brother still?"_

I mutely nodded, thick emotion glotting up my throat.

"Good.

"_You're the one."_

"Where will you go?" a dryness took hold of my chest.

"Away," Jasper already looked far off, not defeated but proud.

"_Don't__**, **_for Bella's sake, don't," I made him swear.

"I'm not gonna kick it, _just yet,_" but his eyes held an insane promise. "It was foolish of me to think I could hold a human…"

"No, it wasn't." I argued, wanting more of a promise from him that he wasn't forsaking this earth.

"She's not leaving, by the way… she'll never leave _you_." A golden smile lit his visage then he straightened himself and smirked. A tilt of lips that didn't meet his eyes, "I'll be watching you, my man…._always."_

_~~ll~~_

Jasper had pulled a Houdini vanishing act.

I still felt his presence, I still hoped I wasn't right about where he was headed, about what he going to let happen to himself.

I found Bella's house under Jasper's direction.

She shut the door in my very sore, very mashed-up face.

I knocked again, and she cracked it.

"I saw Jasper," I started.

"I can tell, you look shit," Bella said as if she were reading a bland newspaper article before winding up to close me out again.

Sticking my toe to the jamb, I blurted, "God! I'm sorry, Bella, I-"

The toe of my boot was caught in the closing door as she disappeared.

"He gave us his blessing," I shouted.

And that was the wrong thing to say because if I thought Bella was angry before… now she was a she-devil, "_He can't just hand me over!_ I'm not property, you _fuck_.

"You've both… _Jesus, _I'm not a goddamn used car! Jasper can't simply sign over the lease to have you _evict_ me a third time!"

What little I could see of her through the chained opening of the portal was shaking, enraged, flushed.

"I-" I tried again.

"Are you out of your mind?" Bella lashed at me.

"Yes… _no. _Not now, I-"

"Goodbye, Edward."

The door was firmly shut, the locks soundly sliding in place.

_..._

_..._

...

_Goodbye, Edward._

Definite.

_Finite._

Like us.

_Goodbye Edward._

...

_..._

_..._

Only, _yeah_, this time I wasn't going anywhere.

I wouldn't do Bella the discourtesy of barging in, banging her door down, _intruding._

_No._

_Goodbye Edward?_

No.

I perched down, I shifted over to the tiny spot of sun melting the ice off her sloop.

If I sat back enough, I felt the smallest of heat coming from beneath her doorway.

Seeping into my bones like minutes to the hour, the cold of the air made arthritis of my human bones, every joint congealing as if I'd been kneeling for hours on the prie-dieu.

_Hours._

Outside Bella's place.

Here in London.

_Thinking, freezing my ass off._

I was such a dickhead!

Fuck it, I'd die of hypothermia before I stood up, walked home, gave her up.

_I felt nothing but her… anymore._

The door burst open.

I skated back on frostbitten hands.

Pins and needles stippled my skin along with hope and… _happiness._

But Bella's eyes were extinguished.

Crawling her gaze over me, she made me suffer with her facelessness, her mask.

Still, my mark was on her neck, that place I'd sucked to red-ruddy-violet just last night.

Bella's countenance bleak, she hauled my uninterred body inside. "Come in, then."

My teeth chattered and didn't cooperate, "Wha-wha-what?"

I found nerve and the snuggling heat of her warmth, "You want me to stay?"

Too many letters of _more goodbyes_ worked over her face. She'd become like the wintry earth, glazed and unreachable… all those shatters glued back together. Shallowly, Bella looked at me as if I were no more than a hobo needing mercy.

"I've got a bladder the size of a pea now." She snuck a look at my crotch and I was ready, _always ready._ "You men are like camels, but I imagine you could use the bathroom after five hours outside."

My hand forecasted across her face and down the thick woolen sweater wrapped around her, "_Bella, _Bella-"

"Just use the toilet."

Dismissed, riddled with guilt_,_ freezing fucking cold, I closed myself in her WC.

After taking a hissing piss, I looked at Bella's toiletries. I smelled the perfumes, the washes, the cosmetics she rarely used. I opened a tube of lipstick, vermillion. It hinted to her luscious kisses.

I squeezed some of her moisturizer to my palm and slid it up to my throat. _Desperate, desperate man._

I opened the medicine chest and inspected her prenatal vitamins.

_She'd said 'toilet'._

She was familiar with the vernacular here.

Color had come back to my cheeks.

_Fight for her_ came back to my veins.

In her flat, I looked around, and it didn't appear she'd just moved in.

"Bella."

She came down the narrow passage, shutting the doors on her way, a tall and in control woman.

Brave.

Everything I loved.

I stuck to the wallpaper, wanting to hold her to me, "When did you get here?"

She wiped over the glasslights in the vestibule's door of her Victorian terrace, "A month ago."

Smacking the wall, I buckled.

In control, her mask in place, she disdained, "Yes, it took me a month to seek you out."

She never trembled, but she looked fatigued.

I could only ask, "You've gotten prenatal care here, right?"

Rubbing her full stomach, mouthing an 'Oh' when the baby kicked up, Bella softened, "Yes, I'm in good hands."

"_Jesus, Bella I-"_

I wasn't allowed to finish.

_My hands, she should be in my hands!_

A carapace, her expression blackened, "Out. Now."

I attempted levity, "I'll be right outside if you-"…_but she slammed the door in my face._

_Goodbye, Edward._

No.

No fucking way.

_Hours._

_I couldn't get in._

Night fell, a pretty dusk washed the sky.

It all looked gray to me.

Clattering of teeth, I held my hands underneath me.

A dense fog rolled over me, making me forgotten.

I was unmoving from my station.

_I wouldn't leave Bella._ Not again.

The door opened and heat swarmed out like summer.

A thick, feather-filled duvet drifted over me.

The door slammed.

I rolled into her scent.

Sanguine sleep and frosty bites pulled me under.

The door opened.

A pillow walloped me against my face.

I jerked awake and laughed and tried to thank Bella but she cosseted herself back inside after running her hands over my face, with her grumble echoing to the night's larks, "I hope you freeze your over-productive balls off out here."

The cold was helpful. Like a deadening coma.

The stone of her steps was padded by the quilt.

The lights on the street blinkered off and on.

I fell off my plinth.

Scraping into the rabble of pebbles and holly planted up to her house.

The door opened.

"Get in here."

I watched Bella's face, ingested the sight of her full breasts jutting with exertion…_or anger…_

"I don't need the lav, thank you," I bit out, walking up her steps and readying for the rest of the night on cold stone.

Kneeling, ponderously lowering herself, Bella touched my lips with her fingertips, and her timbre was gruff, demanding, and then soldering to my jaw, "Get your ass in my house now, before I forget how much I love you."

Still, I hesitated, _a disgrace_ as Jasper had said. Ashamed of myself. As she held the door open the gold glow from within worked against my jetting breaths, coalescing to small gusty ghouls that whirled and then vanished to thin air.

"Get in here before I freeze my tits off, at least," Bella brooked no disobedience.

Clutching the blanket and pillow, I stepped inside.

I folded the cover up, stooped to set it down on her bottom stair, starry-eyed with the memory of her riding over me on my own staircase.

I folded my hands over my crotch as I stood, struggling with my shivers and my never-ending hardness in her presence.

Fecund, fertile, _filled with mine, _Bella scooped me into her arms and dissolved to me, crying in great glots, "Too cold. _You're too cold._ You remind me of… of… _you remind me of Jasper._"

Her pronouncement made me shake with mighty chills.

My teeth ground and jumped into each other.

"Come," Bella led me up to the second floor over rickety, whining steps.

I stumbled on my feet, those frozen blocks.

Her en suite was an aerie. Yellow and sunrise and dawn and the first pastel lights of dusk. My teeth chattered and my eyebrows furled, my fists curled and clanked like thick icy igloos to my hips.

"Be-be-ll-la, I-I," I swayed to the wall and watched her turn on the shower and test the temperature.

"You are meant to be warm… _let me wash you, heat you now,_" Bella whispered as she guided my stiff clothing off of me, taking care to touch only cloth.

_Was this all there'd be? Was I just a charity case now? Would she turn me out at first light?_

Steam hissed off of me, and she shed her sweaters and leggings and slippers and a shawl and a flouncy skirt until she was as nude as me.

Stuffing us into the shower, a doubled space, a luxury, Bella brushed against me; even this extra wide stall was too small for her opulent body and me.

A loofah and soap and the sap of shampoo and the hot needlepoint of spray stabbing me. Her hands letting go of the sponge and fingering into my muscles. I couldn't hide my erection. Every swoop of her body to mine, every glide of her hands over me had me groaning and moving closer until my lips and hers met with a the slick rain of the shower adding to our slippery, slow taste of each other.

Turning off the jets, she reached out to grab towels warmed on the radiator, and her ass was pink from the heat of the water.

I leaned over to rasp her hanging nipples, to rub her hot body, to kiss her bottom cheeks.

She turbaned a towel around herself and ran another between my legs, over my chest—her eyes so low and melting and watching they made my cock twitch, my hips jerk up, my breath hitch from sexual heat instead of invasive cold. Satisfied I was dry, she wrapped the cloth around my hips, grabbed an end and walked backwards… smiling at the new wetness blooming from my cock's hard, beating head and seeping into the towel.

She lost that scrap about her, with measured movements climbing onto her high four poster bed. Opening the wide sash of silken sheets, Bella beckoned me, "Take it off, Edward."

At the invitation my erection slapped out, and I loosed the terrycloth. I tunneled to her and she felt her like an oven warming me from inside and out.

Obsessed, possessive, her hands ran in lascivious lines all over me. Her big belly prodded me, her knee opened my thighs and her swollen pussy slid up my leg.

Peeling the hair off her face, those pretty tendrils stuck to her temples, I held her away, "Don't, Bella.

"_I'm so close to losing it. _I want to be inside of you so hard…"I made away, but she linked herself to me, so full, so ready.

"I've been so cold for so long. _Warm me._" She licked and tickled and tasseled my throat until I grunted and shifted my hips so my dick tasted her wet hot flesh.

"I won't be _him._ I am not Jasper," I was starving against her lips, biting her pout in my mouth.

"I know! You think I don't know?" Bella sat up over me, her tits like minute hands taking us further away from the man she'd loved, from the only brother I'd had.

"I've waited twelve years to be here with you. I broke my heart, yours and his too, _I hurt us all._" She looked between her legs and moaned at the vision of my cock raised, ready, red and greedy.

"We can't undo this, we can't _not love_ who we love. _He knows this._"

I braced myself and felt her waist and pulled her down right over me, and she was tighter and hotter and fuller and more ridged and rippling than before.

Mt neck cracked like my voice, "_I love you, Isabella Swan, and let every man know this._"

She was on me, like a coil, a sexy coil of flesh roasting me in and out with every slice of her hips, "_No one, no man… no one else... whatever hell this brings._"

_Heaven._

White fucking heaven, as I heaved and she dragged her fingernails and I sucked her lips and she bit my mouth and we were… _we were…_

_We were espoused._

Freeze framed and motionless, we hung so close to the sky, _we_ were the angels of death.

Like snowflakes, like rare nonpareils, we wafted down, _down and down_ into and over each other… a tangle of heat and love and hurt and apologies and… _him._

"Can we just let him go?"

"No."

"I do love him."

"Me too."

"_I never wanted more than this."_

"Nor me."

"Stay."

"_Always."_

"Forever."

_Sleep._

_Like Jasper could no-…_

There was a hefty weight on me, a hot tit in my palm.

I awoke to my fingers playing a tune, tucking, pinching, pulling.

_Bella._

My cock was already halfway inside of her, her back to me, her spine's keys arched, her neck a bow, her body accepting.

I rolled away, "I'm sorry."

She pulled me over her, my hands at her head, my abdomen stationed just off of her belly.

"You need to make love to me."

Exhaling, I couldn't... even... coudn't _stop_, "_Yeah."_

"Yes," our bodies cried to one another, heaping and helpless and anointed only by what we'd created.

I held her stomach and watched it roll, I lavished her with my words of honor and love.

_She saw, she raised and rolled and rammed with me and in the end we cleaved, two broken bits put back together._

As the night made us huddle and seek, Bella complained, "I can't get comfortable."

The breadth of her was on top of me and our feet tangled.

I dropped my hands to her shoulder blades and down her spine, pressing into her muscles.

"My feet hurt," she wishy-washed to my torso.

"My hips ache," Bella laid onto her back.

"_My heart aches,_" her boobs jostled.

"I know," I held her to me, "I _know._"

Mine had rent asunder, been stitched up, been scarred and nullified.

_I knew._

"Jasper?," came her question.

"He's there," I reminded her. I scowled and loved and hated my brother, "He gave us up."

"I let him go," Bella's sobs domed over us.

"I know," _I had, too._

"I'll never stop loving him."

"I love you."

"I know."

"_I love you_," I helped myself to her body, feeling the boost of a shoulder or elbow or foot kicking out at me.

I smothered Bella's stomach with kisses, "_I love you both."_

_He was nearing his escape._

_Jasper was._

I could feel it, like one chamber of my heart was coming unstitched from its anchor of flesh and blood and arteries _and_…

"_I love you" _I silently screamed.

_Don't you fucking go. _I howled.

I held Bella tight as a cocoon as a giant luminescence threw itself from the moon—kicking it into a tailspin—to the constellations—making whirlpools of them—to this Earth, diving like a Phoenix to its one hundredth year and its death.

_He met the sun._

His was a volcano of ash.

Curling and groping together, hating the sunrise and watching the haze marching over the city as _his _smoke fell like snow, his remains were everywhere.

A dome.

_Done._

Gone.

_~~ll~~_

"I can't find Blankie."

That high piercing voice broke over me. Slumbering, I grumbled, "Here, have mine." I pressed against Bella's hips until her sleepy body met Sol's on the edge of the bed.

Solange giggled like a little mouse, "But that's mommy!"

"She's good though, _make you go back to sleep, sweetheart… _snuggle up now."

I laughed and watched my two loves go back to sleep.

_Solange and Bella._

_I knew Jasper was here. _

When Sol had been born, that nuclear light had dimmed the halogens in the delivery room.

Our daughter was his daughter too, in many ways_. _

"You could never leave us, Brother."

_I will guard you all… forever._

_~Fin~_

~Okay, this is _completely_ complete now ;). Reviews are wonderful! And…_yeah, _went a little bit fantastical there at the end, so I have no idea what you might think about that…~

There is a gorgeous banner for this on my profile if you want to have a look.

Cheers, Rie~


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